Abstract:
Information technology and e-commerce based activities are popular in the contemporary'
world. Interest in applying e-commerce to the various aspects of business activities
increasing in the Sri Lankan context. In 2004 the introduction of e-commerce to the Sri
Lankan stock market took place by introducing the e-trading practices, the Internet based
stock trading activities. Since then, as an industry, e-trading practices have been improving
gradually with the participation of investors and stock brokering firms. The study focused
analyzing the current situation of the e-trading practices and finding the significant factors
that affect the adoption of e-trading practices from the perspectives of Internet stock trading
investors and stock brokering firms. The analysis was carried out by using qualitative and
quantitative methodologies.
In order to find the adoption factors from the investor perspective, it used 3 factors extracted
from the well known technology adoption based theories known as theory of planned
behavior (TPB) and technology acceptance model (TAM). These 3 factors were: (1)
Attitude, extracted from TPB, (2) subjective norms, extracted from TPB and (3) perceived
ease of use, extracted from TAM. It was found that both theories in common pointed out that
the above factors directly affected the behavioral intention and encouraged individuals to
adopt the technology. Apart from the above three variables that affected the behavioral
intention, the researcher picked up perceived benefit and perceived trust from the past
empirical studies. According to the past empirical research findings, the researcher was able
to identify five factors that may affect the adoption of e-trading practices of broker
companies namely, organizational readiness, relative advantage, demand, network readiness
and regulations. Based on the 380 questionnaire responses collected from the Internet based
stock trading investors, it was revealed that all five variables significantly affected the
adoption of e-trading practices of individual investors. The 26 questionnaire responses
collected from the Internet trading stock brokering firms reflected the fact that out of the
above five factors organizational readiness and demand were significant for the adoption of
e-trading practices by stock brokering firms.
Findings of this study results show that authorities should encourage Internet stock trading
by enabling brokering firms to adopt e-trading practices as much as possible which will then
attract more and more investors to participate in stock trading which will finally be helpful
for the betterment ofthe industry and as well as for the betterment ofthe country as a whole.
